Mrs. Gingerbread, Vancouver
Age and Occupation: 32, Psychologist
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 33, Software Engineer
Engagement Date: Sometime in the fall of 2004
Wedding Date: July, 2008
Blogging Since: March 24, 2008
Venue: Rainforest wedding, beachfront restaurant reception
About Me: I recently moved to Canada from Southern California. Trying to plan a wedding in a new city, not to mention a new country, is tough, but the fact that we can get legally married here more than makes up for it! The wedding will be an opportunity for most of our family and friends to see our new city for the first time so it will be both a wedding and a reunion. Besides my future wife, I am also madly in love with a good bargain, Swedish pastries, Tivo, and my two dogs and calico cat (in no particular order).
A Kid-Friendly Wedding
July 3rd, 2008 @ 3:39 pm by Mrs. Gingerbread
I could not imagine our wedding without kids. My two sisters have six kids between them, with the youngest being an infant. The other kids range in ages from 3-12. With the exception of my infant nephew, all of the other kids will be in the wedding in one way or another.
Lucky for us, we are having our ceremony at a place that will allow the kids to run around and play before the ceremony. Then, as luck would have it, there is a playground right next to our reception site.
But I am not leaving it all up to location. We are providing the kiddos with goodie bags. Always keeping the budget in mind, we got most of the goodies from the dollar bin at Michael’s and then picked up a couple of things from Costco.
My favourite find was a massive box of gummy candies from Costco. How cool is this?!
Each kid will get a couple of handfuls of gummy candy plus:
For my three year old nephew:
For my five year old niece:
For my nine year old niece:
For my eleven year old niece (the crane folder):
For my twelve year old niece:
I had a hard time thinking of something that would be fun for a tween, but this quiz box looks pretty cool. I figure all the older girls can play with this together and learn about who they are with the help of 50 personality quizzes during our reception. The average cost for each pile o’ prezzies was about $8.60. I still need to find gift bags for this stuff. These gifts serve both as favours for the kids (they are also getting luggage tags, but what kid is gonna enjoy that?) and thank you gifts for participating in our wedding.
For those of you who will have children at your wedding, are you doing separate favours for the kids?
12 Responses to “A Kid-Friendly Wedding”
What thoughftul gifts! We are only having two kids at our wedding - my fiancee’s only neice and nephew (flowergirl and ring bearer). Because they’ll be the only kiddos there, we will need stuff to keep them occupied. Thanks for the great post!
Two words: MAD LIBS
they older girls will love them.
At my friend’s wedding last weekend the older kids got candy wrapped in tulle and the younger kids got coloring book sheets (found online) and crayons. Simple and easy on the budget!
Those are such perfect gifts - the jewelry kits, especially!! Their parents will definitely appreciate these, *and* the extra luggage tags! 
I don’t think there’ll be too many kids at our wedding (most of our friends with kids are in-town), but thanks for the great ideas - the Michaels dollar bins rule!
Ditto on the Mad Libs, but I think what you have so far is awesome! Very thoughtful 
How thoughtful are you!? I love those gummi candies! The kids will go bonkers over them!
@Miss Pomegranate: Yup, it sure is! Miss GB 2.0 has already gotten into the stash.
First, I should say I live in Ontario so I’m referencing Canadian stores here….I had 6 kids at my wedding and decided to do kid’s buckets for them. I picked up small galvanized pails at Dollorama and filled them with fun stuff specific to each age group…colouring books (colour wonder for the littlest ones - the marker only writes on the special pads provided), rings, lip gloss, snap bracelets, old maid & go fish card games, sparkly diaries with feather pens for the older girls, my little ponies for the younger ones….and a bucket full of toy cars for the 2 year old boy! (I got a lot of the stuff at Dollarama and some at Zellers - all in all, I think I spend about $85 total for the 6 buckets.) The buckets were a total HIT!! I wrote each child’s name on the outside of the pail with a sharpie and placed them on the escort card table so they saw them when they walked in. It definitely kept them occupied and their parents kept thanking me for them as they helped to kepe the kids settled through the boring stuff like speeches.
I hope that provides some inspiration for you! I can send you a photo if you’d like to see them in action.
I love what you got the kids. The kids are going to love this stuff. I also think Mad Libs would be great for the older kids.
Kids love the music and ice cream at weddings.
@Melody: I’d love to see your pails! They sound really cute.
@QueenoftheClick: The kids menu includes ice cream for dessert! I think they are going to enjoy themselves
Very cute. We are doing separate kid favors. So far we have bought push puppets, ring pops, fortune fish, and funny glasses (which I hope will be passed around to the adults for some funny pictures!). The mad libs sound great!
